


shutter speed

by asofthaven



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Pining, canonverse, suna sells photos of the team, thats the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 07:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asofthaven/pseuds/asofthaven
Summary: Suna builds an empire on pictures of his teammates. Or one, in particular.Three dozen pictures and thirteen days of summer break later, Suna is thinking that Kita is less natural disaster, more geographical feature. Like how there’s hundreds of pictures of Mount Fuji even though the damn thing never changes.





	shutter speed

When a member of the school newspaper asks Suna to take photos of the volleyball club, it doesn’t take long for him to say yes. He was part of the photography club for a brief time in middle school, and his father is a photographer. Besides, it’s better to have someone taking pictures who won’t scream if a stray volleyball comes their way.

 _And_ it gives him an excuse to slack off for a day. A win for everyone, Suna muses as he clicks lazily through the photos from morning practice. Each shot is mentally catalogued between newspaper-material and blackmail-material, with a stray few deleted on the spot for being too blurred.

He leans back in his seat, lifting the borrowed digital camera up to squint at a shot of one of the twins.

“Suna-kun, is that Atsumu-kun?” the girl directly behind him, Rena, asks suddenly.

“What?” Their corner of the classroom goes quiet, the girls by Rena’s desk ceasing their conversation. Suna raises an eyebrow at their rapt attention on him. “What the hell?”

“The picture, the picture,” Rena repeats, leaning forward. Her friend reaches for the camera, which Suna pulls close to his chest with a flat expression. “It’s Atsumu-kun, isn’t it?”

“How did you even see that?” The camera’s screen is smaller than Suna’s palm, but she’s right--it’s Atsumu on the screen, volleyball frozen just above his fingertips.

“D’you have one of Osamu-kun also?” Rena’s friend asks.

“You have no shame,” Suna says, impressed. He’s about to turn the camera off, tell them to go back to their conversation and leave him out of it, but--

“D’you have any others? Are you selling them?” she asks, leaning forward.

Suna tilts his head. It’s weird. Her voice sounds exactly like a pocketful full of yen.

He turns towards her and smiles. “Oh,” he says, “I have tons.”

 

The twins, Suna finds out quickly, are extremely profitable. In a week, Suna has enough pre-order payments to buy a pack of nice photo paper and a cheap binder for display. The week after those are gone, he’s invested in a double pack of photo paper and has convinced his father to let him use the family studio due to Suna’s genuinely renewed interest in photography.

It’s mostly truth, even.

Requests come in. Suna has a list the length of his forearm by the end of the week. He has to draw the line at people from other clubs, but the limitation doesn’t mean much--Inarizaki’s volleyball team is famous, and just about every person in school has a favorite player.

It’s easy take photos between sets, during water breaks, during three-on-threes if coach doesn’t catch him slinking away too quickly. Weeks pass. He’s a first-year, still benched, and the hold that the current third years have on their positions isn’t so easily broken this soon into the year.

But Suna is patient, or at the very least, he doesn’t hunger the way the twins do. He takes his photos from the sidelines during practice matches, and bides his time.

“Shouldn’t we be compensated or somethin’?” Osamu asks, during lunch. Suna’s halfway through rearranging the binder to include photos from their last practice match, a neat pile of orders for the week ready for pick-up on the side of his desk.

Suna doesn’t answer, and Osamu doesn’t bother asking again. This is why he’s the preferable of the twins.

“‘Samu!” Atsumu barges into the classroom, a storm of undone top buttons and tousled hair. An absolute delinquent the moment he opens his mouth, which is why Suna takes great pains to never sell photos at the same time Atsumu is in the room. He deals in prolonging dreams, not shattering them. “You said ya’d practice with me during lunch!”

“I wouldn’t agree to somethin’ like that,” Osamu says. Astumu pulls a stray chair to the side of Suna’s desk and sits heavily, scowling.

“It’s not warm enough to be undoing your buttons like that,” Suna adds. He knows this argument will end with one or both of them being dragged outside to practice with Atsumu regardless, so there’s no harm in distracting Atsumu for a few precious seconds of sitting.

Atsumu scoffs, attention immediately diverted to Suna’s binder.

“Those’re new.” Atsumu points at the page Suna’s left undone. It’s a spread of the club’s second years, strangely in demand for reasons Suna can’t begin to fathom. When it comes to flashiness, Atsumu is the obvious choice.

“Ain’t it mostly Kita-san though?” Osamu asks, leaning closer.

Atsumu mirrors him. “Yeah, it is.”

They swivel their heads to look at Suna, who frowns. “It’s creepy when you do that.”

“You ain’t denyin’ it,” they say in tandem, which is worse.

“Ojiro-san’s in all of these,” Suna says. As are the rest of the second years, which is why Suna took all the pictures in the first place. He had _demands_ to fulfill.

“Ya mean his nose is.”

“Oh, that’s Oomimi’s arm, I think.”

Suna shuts the album and stands. “Didn’t you say you wanted to practice?”

“Traitor,” Osamu whispers at the same time Atsumu pushes his chair noisily back, saying, “There’s no way I’m gonna be switched out in the next practice match!”

Suna puts the binder back in his bag, his heartbeat an unwarranted pulse in his throat.

 

There’s a minor panic going on in one corner of the gym, the twins having gotten into a argument in the middle of practice and Ginjima having been the unfortunate victim of a spike meant, presumably, for Osamu’s face. Kita took care of getting Ginjima’s face cleaned up while Ojiro took care of scolding Atsumu. Personally, Suna thinks the roles should have been reversed.

“He hasn’t apologized yet, has he?” Kita asks, stopping short of Suna on his way back from the utility room, where Suna saw him disappear with a red-stained towel and gloves. He’s eyeing the situation at the other side of the gym with an intent expression.

Suna’s fingers tighten reflexively, but his camera is stowed away in his bag. “Nope.”

Kita lets out a short sigh. “Where’s Osamu?”

Osamu had disappeared out the gym doors in a quiet flurry shortly after punching Atsumu for hitting Ginjima. “Dunno,” Suna answers. “Hoping someone else will deal with it, probably.”

“That’s irresponsible. Osamu’s the most effective person at getting Atsumu out of these moods,” Kita says.

Suna tilts his head against the wall. Ojiro is clearly losing his battle to get Atsumu to apologize. “You’re not gonna scold him?”

“After he and Osamu apologize to Gin,” Kita answers simply, and Suna thinks _of course_. Thinks that Kita is hardwired to stand back and take stock of problems in front of him, to solve them via numbered lists and descending degrees of severity. Of course acceptance of the pain caused ranks higher than the disruption of practice.

“What if they don’t?”

“They will.”

Quiet takes shape between them. Suna watches the way Kita watches the other corner of the room, wonders what more it would take for Kita to get visibly angry if not at this. Suna wouldn’t risk trying something, but the thought comes and goes all the same.

The gym doors slam open. Osamu, scowling deeply, crosses towards where Atsumu is with a few long strides and plants a fist in the top of Atsumu’s head.

“You’re a dumbass, y’know that?”

“I don’t wanna hear that from you.”

Osamu’s hand flattens along Atsumu’s head. There’s a whispered argument--Suna’s too far away to catch a word of it--and then the twins are bowing, short, in Ginjima’s direction, Osamu’s hand still firm atop Atsumu’s head.

“Sorry,” they say, one petulant, the other emotionless. Ginjima’s laugh comes out awkwardly, most likely because there’s still blood dribbling out of his nose.

“It’s weird when you guys do that, y’know?”

“You two still have to apologize to the rest of the team,” Ojiro says.

“What, that’s wasn’t enough?”

“It’s ‘Tsumu’s fault, though.”

“You two--”

“Shinsuke.” Oomimi calls. There’s a sigh in his voice.

Kita pushes away from the wall. “Coming,” he says. His face is as impassive as ever, wiped clean of the intent look from earlier. The disapproving silence he radiates cuts through the noise of the gym effortlessly.

Suna watches his back, unsatisfied.

Kita has a limited number of expressions. Suna doesn’t think it’s because Kita has a limited number of emotions, but more that he has no reason to make different expressions. Kita doesn’t do things that are unnecessary. Whatever he can convey with words, he conveys with words. To add expression would be unnecessary.

Suna still catches every angle of those singular expressions through the lens of his camera, though; finds himself searching for the slant of light that will reveal a crack in the cool concrete.

In his room, swiping through the pictures at the end of the week, he can’t find one. He’s taken a clean dozen of just Kita, and that’s all there is: the tilt of Kita’s chin, and the set of his gaze, and the occasional small frown or furrowed eyebrows. Nothing Suna hasn’t seen before.

 _These are no good_ , Suna thinks, because the girls won’t buy these. But when he’s downloading them, later, he doesn’t delete them. Keeps them like a secret.

 

“He’s not even that good,” Astumu says. He’s holding one of Suna’s sample in a graceless hand, frowning at the figure in the photo. Suna would know Atsumu was talking about Kita even without seeing Atsumu pick up that particular photo--Atsumu’s been griping about this for a while now. Suna’s pretty sure it’s because Atsumu, like other feral animals, only recognizes power that comes from strength. The way Kita commands respect is something Atsumu can’t understand. “He’s not even a regular.”

“You’re still intimidated by him,” Suna says blandly.

Atsumu clicks his tongue. Apparently, he won’t deign Suna’s comment with an answer.

Suna rolls his eyes and finally shoulders his bag. “Why d’you care about him so much?”

“ _I_ ain’t the one takin’ pictures of him every day,” Atsumu says, pushing away from the desk with a sudden, heavy movement.

“I take pictures of _you_ everyday, too,” Suna says. He snatches the photo back and shoves the album in his bag. They’re already late to club, and the last thing Suna wants is Atsumu’s mouth running when they get there. It’s too troublesome to deal with.

“For blackmail.”

“For profit.”

“What are Kita-san’s for, then? ‘Cause he ain’t as profitable as me or ‘Samu and you got just as many of him as us.”

Too late, Suna realizes he fell into one of Atsumu’s annoying provocations. It’s in the smug line of Atsumu’s mouth as he shoulders his bag. Cat and cream.

“I dunno what you mean,” Suna says, irritated. He has to stop himself from saying more--from explaining his tiny preoccupations with Kita’s stoic face and his slight obsession with wanting to see Kita undone. Or at least unsettled. Stops himself from explaining that it has nothing to do with Kita himself, and more to do with Kita as a concept, as an opponent that Suna has gotten no closer to beating.

Suna lives to disrupt the flow of others, but he has no idea how to disrupt Kita Shinsuke.

It doesn’t matter, in the end; Atsumu’s already gone, and the excuse reverberates in the warm air of the empty classroom only for Suna’s ears.

 

Once he’s done his duty of putting the balls away after practice, Suna sits with his back against the gym wall and takes his photos. These new ones, he thinks as he catches an unusually pleasant sight of the twins not trying to kill each other, will be enough to restock his photo paper supply before summer break starts.

“The camera again?” Kita asks. He doesn’t break his stride as he wipes the floor of the court, doesn’t even spare a glance in Suna’s direction. It’s rare to hear him speak when he’s cleaning. Usually his single mindedness is interrupted only when he notices that someone isn’t doing their part properly.

Which, Suna reflects, may be what’s happening here.

Suna pulls his camera to his face, finds the captain laughing with Ojiro, and presses the shutter. “The girls like the post-practice pictures.”

It’s good lighting now, too; the gym doors are open and strong sunlight cuts through the air. It makes even the fluorescent lights seem soft. Oomimi, standing by the doorway and looking serious with a broom in his hands, is Suna’s next victim.

“Is that what y’do this for?” Kita asks. He turns, the wide broom coming back in the other direction. It’s meticulous, and Suna knows well enough by now that if Kita’s the one doing the cleaning, there won’t be a speck of dust when he’s done. “The girls?”

Suna and his camera turn towards Kita, backsplashed by the light through the high windows. “I don’t really care about them,” Suna says evenly. Kita keeps sweeping, and Suna follows the movement with his camera. “But if they’re pleased, they spend more money.”

Kita laughs. Suna presses the shutter too quickly. He knows without looking that the photo is going to be blurry, the composition all wrong, but he can’t help feel like he caught an image of a UFO or something equally improbable.

 _It’s Thursday_ , Suna reminds himself, because improbable events should be memorialized. _Today is a Thursday._

“That’s true,” Kita says, like he hasn’t just caused a minor tectonic shift in the earth. Even the rest of the team has gone bug-eyed at the sound of Kita’s laughter. It’s not that they’ve never heard Kita laugh--it’s that every laugh is so unpredictable, no one is ever quite ready for it.

Kita, characteristically, is back to stoic a moment later. “But that doesn't mean you shouldn't still do things properly.”

“Sure,” Suna answers, after a moment. It’s somewhat cryptic, but typical of Kita--and Kita’s back to brooming with that same single-minded focus anyways, so Suna doesn’t dwell on it. Tells himself not to dwell on it.

 

Suna spent a lot of time in his father’s darkroom when he was younger. In that complete darkness, he was always hyperaware of the chemical scent and the faint rustle of film and the soft splashes of water.

“You don’t want to try?” his father would ask, occasionally; at some point, Suna began to hear the age in his father’s voice. Suddenly, suddenly, a thing he’s always known, come to light. 

“No.” He’ll take direction if given, but Suna’s never found the charm in the developing process. He prefers the ease of digital photography--no fumbling in the dark to apply filters, namely.

But he can’t deny that there’s still something comforting about the process in the darkroom, in listening to familiar rhythms. He may not understand it, but Suna can appreciate that, at least.

 

Suna doesn’t put the photo in the binder--doesn’t even print it--but Atsumu steals his camera and Suna isn’t quick enough to grab it back before Atsumu finds the photo. He and Osamu bump heads as they lean over the camera.

“It's blurry,” Osamu says with a displeased click of his tongue while Atsumu, a true believer, says, “I’ll buy five.”

“I’ll take one of his,” Osamu adds, and Suna ignores the bickering that ensures after that. It’s become like white noise to him.

He snatches his camera back, and gives Atsumu a chop on the head for good measure. The photo is tiny on the digital screen, but the shape of Kita’s laughter is there all the same. Suna tilts his head, considering.

He opens his palm under Atsumu’s nose. “You have to pay upfront, y’know.”

Atsumu’s grin is on _this_ side of irritated. “You won’t do a favor for a friend?”

“Who said we’re friends?” Suna asks at the same time Osamu says, “That’s rich comin’ from you.”

Atsumu pays up nonetheless, though it doesn’t escape Suna’s notice that the yen comes from Osamu’s bag and not Atsumu’s. Suna notes Atsumu’s order in his notebook, scribbles the word _thursday_ right next to it since Kita’s photo doesn’t have a number. The order is immediately below the orders Suna has for pictures of Atsumu himself. He stares at the number, then turns to look at Astumu’s face.

He closes the notebook and sits back. “The girls have awful taste.”

“I’m keepin’ your business in operation,” Atsumu says hotly, trying to pluck the notebook from Suna’s hands like the gubby monster he is.

Suna refuses to allow Atsumu’s ego to inflate even more. “That’s what I mean.”

Atsumu is everything summer storm--a little bit terrifying, all gale force, and then, over. They cause a minor scene, Atsumu trying too hard to get Suna’s notebook and Suna revelling too much in taunting Atsumu.

Suna is victorious this time around, notebook still in his smug hands. When Atsumu begins muttering under his breath, Osamu flicks a pencil between his twin’s eyebrows. “Shaddup, you’re annoyin’.”

Osamu is more earthquake--cool stillness, a sudden shifting energy, and then stillness again.

“Exhausting,” Suna says, mostly to himself. He thinks that if his camera trailed either of the twins for an entire day, he’d have enough pictures for every emotion in the dictionary.

He twirls his notebook in his hands once before putting it in his bag. He’s still thinking about it at practice that day, during break, between sets at the training camp. Three dozen pictures and thirteen days of summer break later, Suna is thinking that Kita is less natural disaster, more geographical feature. Like how there’s hundreds of pictures of Mount Fuji even though the damn thing never changes.

 

“This business model is unsustainable, don’t you think?” Kita asks. He’s being meticulous today, too; wiping the volleyballs before practice even though no one asked him to and no one, except Kita and his sense of duty, cares.

Their teammates trickle through the gym doors, a holler from captain telling them they’ll start the daily run in a few minutes. Suna snaps a group shot, keeps his camera at eye level when he turns back to Kita.

“How so?” Suna asks. Kita in profile, harsh under fluorescent gym lights. Suna adjusts the angle to make the sharpness more intentional.

Kita turns, stares right through Suna’s lens and into his eyes. “You can’t take the camera onto the court with you.”

“...And?” Suna asks after a moment. The camera lowers, which is bad because then Suna has nowhere else to look but at Kita’s steady gaze.

Kita’s attention falls back to his towel and the volleyballs and the tiny repetitions of habitual movements. “Well, you’ll be on the court next year.”

Kita stands to toss the volleyball in the bin. The rattling it makes may well be the only noise in the gym, save the way Suna’s surprise has a tangible sound in his chest.

“I’ve been slacking off,” Suna says, keeping his voice even. He waves his camera, in case Kita has somehow forgotten about its existence.

“You haven't been,” Kita says, as close to confusion as possible for him. “You've been staying back to practice with the the twins on Saturdays.”

This, somehow, is more shocking than anything that could have come out of Kita's mouth. Because when had Kita been watching them? How did they not notice? How did _Suna_ not notice?

“Only because Atsumu is a monster,” Suna explains. He fiddles with the buttons on his camera--in focus, out of focus. Suna has an answer for a lot of things, but not for how his chest fills with warmth at the knowledge that Kita has watched him, too.

“Coach noticed it, too,” Kita continues, oblivious. “That’s why you’re a reserve for the next practice game, ain’t it?”

Suna watches Kita carefully. Captain hollers for them to gather, but Suna stays sitting. “What’s your point?”

Kita smiles, fleeting, too fast for the speed of the shutter; Suna, though, catches and catalogues it somewhere near his heart, right where the blood pumps.

“I think you ain’t content with just watching, Suna,” Kita says. His words are heavy. Intentional. “I don’t think you ever were.”

Suna opens his mouth uselessly. He doesn’t move or blink or breathe, possibly. Suna thinks he might not be breathing.

“That’s why you should put more effort in,” Kita says, folding his towel and tossing the last ball into the bin. It takes Suna a moment to realize that Kita has stood up, staring at Suna. Suna doesn’t scramble to follow, but he’s certainly moving quicker than usual. “Coach will notice that, too.”

“Right,” Suna tries to say, but what comes out is a rasp of air. The definition of breathless. He tries again, but Kita has already left to join the rest of the team where they congregate by the doors. “Right.”

His heart rate is erratic even before he joins everyone on the obligatory run. There’s a bitter taste at the back of Suna’s throat that he can’t get rid of, not matter how quick his pace is. It tastes a little like fear. A little like disappointment. A little like the gut drop when Kita catches Suna taking a photo of him and Suna looks away first.

 

During lunch break, Suna drops a photo of Atsumu into an envelope that marks his latest order. His binder is open next to him, as he mentally checks off each photo as it goes into the envelope.

“Don’tcha just want his attention?” Osamu asks suddenly.

Suna snorts. “Atsumu? I want the opposite of that guy’s attention.”

“I’m talkin’ about Kita-san,” Osamu says, irritated.

Suna’s eyes flick away from the photos in his hand to land on Osamu’s impassive face. “What the hell? What’re you talking about?”

Osamu pages through Suna’s binder, flipping all the way back to the photos that gave Suna the inspiration for this gig in the first place.

“One,” Osamu says, finger poised above a shot of Kita and Oomimi. Number 3 on the page.

“Two,” he continues, pointing to Kita again. Osamu continues _three_ and _four_ and _five_ and _six_. _Kita_ and _Kita_ and _Kita_ and _Kita_.

There are fifty-seven photos in this binder. Suna shuts it on top of Osamu’s fingers to save himself from facing the mathematical truth.

“No,” Suna answers coolly, back to his packing with a practiced indifference, “It’s nothing like that.”

Osamu’s answering snort is so Atsumu-like that Suna almost thinks he might have been duped. But even if they have the same genes, Atsumu can’t do quiet derision as well as Osamu does. “Nothin’ like that, he says. None of the girls order that many pictures of him.”

It’s true, but Suna isn’t sure how Osamu knows that.

“I’m trying to please all my customers,” Suna says, simple.

Osamu gives him a deadpan look. “I thought only ‘Tsumu could be this dumb.”

It’s the single most offensive thing Suna’s ever been told in his life. “I just--” he starts, then falters. Osamu’s deadpan is oppressive. Suna twists the envelope in his hands, eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think it’s weird? He’s always so put together. Doesn’t he have any other expressions?”

“I think it’s weird that you spend all your time thinkin’ ‘bout this,” Osamu says. He finishes his milk box in a long sip and crushes the box in his hand like the monster he pretends not to be. “And you still haven’t figured out the answer.”

“I don’t--” Suna begins to protest, but Osamu’s already gotten up to throw his milkbox away. They both know Suna’s not going to shout his protest across the classroom, so it sits in his throat instead, like the tickle before a cough.

 

The school year dwindles to nothingness, as does Suna’s supply of photo paper, his patience for Atsumu trying to get free prints off of him, and the third years appearances at practice, after a loss at spring high. Suna thinks this is why photos of the third-years are in demand. Something about trying to capture things you know are impermanent.

It’s foolish, in his opinion. The thing about memories is that they fade. Nothing more, nothing less.

With the end of the year comes the new jerseys. They pile into the gym, mindless chattering a front hiding the tension in the air. Coach Kurosu claps his hands to get everyone’s attention. Suna doesn’t sweat at seeing the box of jerseys, open atop a metal folding chair. The starting line-up isn’t decided this early, and so whatever is decided here is irrelevant to Suna. His sights have always been on the long-term. It’s no easy feat to be a regular on Inarizaki’s team. Not something easily achieved by slacking off.

Because Kita was right--Suna _hasn’t_ been slacking. He'd call it _conserving_. Suna may not hunger the way the twins do, but he does still hunger.

He thinks even Kita hungers. Thinks it’s proven when the tears spill over, the captain’s jersey in careful hands.

“Didn’t know he could do that,” Osamu says, between sets.

Suna watches the back of Kita’s head. “Me neither.”

Seeing Kita cry strikes Suna’s robot theory, for one. And for two, it lingers in the back of Suna’s mind for the rest of practice, an unhelpful spectre taunting him. Like, _he can do this, too._

After practice, Suna leans against the wall, and brings Kita’s profile into focus. Kita doesn’t do anything except look his usual, put-together self while he waits for Ojiro to come out of the gym. He holds the jersey in careful hands, but his expression doesn’t waver. Not even a hint of the emotion from earlier.

Suna takes the picture anyway.

 

The gym is cleared out now, the start of the volleyball season leaving the gym with lingering warmth. Suna’s first two fingers are stiff with tape, but he still has his camera in his hands. There’s a nagging at the back of his mind that sounds a hell of a lot like Kita, telling him to see this through to the end.

Suna crouches and lifts his camera. The gym looks bigger, like this.

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

Suna starts at the sound of Kita’s voice. It comes from directly behind him, and when Suna looks over his shoulder, Kita is walking towards him.

“‘Bout what?” Suna asks. Then after a moment of thought, “Captain.”

Kita blinks at the title, a brief pause in his gait betraying his surprise. “I haven’t gotten used to that, yet.”

“What’s there to get used to?” Suna asks. He faces the gym again, but he can hear Kita’s steady footsteps like a siren. “Everyone’s always kind of treated you like the captain.”

Kita comes to a stop just beyond Suna’s periphery. “I have to lock up,” he says, after a moment. Doesn’t agree or disagree. Suna snaps his photo.

When Suna stands, Kita is too close. He walked forward when Suna wasn’t paying attention, and now the toes of their shoes are pressed neatly against each other. If he inhales, Suna thinks their chests might touch.

“The starting line-up,” Kita says. It takes Suna several shallow breaths to realize what Kita’s talking about.

“It’s not set in stone yet,” Suna says.

“You want it to be.” With his intonation, it almost sounds like a question.

Suna wants to take a step back, create some breathing room, but stubbornness keeps him in place. “Well I did come here to play volleyball. The photos were a temporary thing.”

Kita smiles faintly, a tiny thing that would be lost to the dusk if Suna wasn't so attuned to the planes of Kita's face. "I see," he says, then, “Can I see your photos?” He doesn’t reach for it, but his gaze is fixed pointedly on the camera.

Suna's heart skips a few beats. His fingers dig into the plastic. “You can’t see these.”

Kita’s head tips to one side. “Why not?”

Suna twists the camera in his palm, in time with the nervous thrumming of his blood. He’s always known why people have taken hundreds of pictures of Mount Fuji.  
“You don't need to.”

“I like your photos,” Kita continues, as if Suna hadn't said anything. He reaches a hand to still the camera in Suna’s hands. The proximity is like a second heartbeat in Suna’s fingertips. “You look serious when you take them. People feel famous when you take a picture of them.”

Suna’s heard this, if not so straightforwardly--it’s evident in the way the team crowds when he prints new photos, in the way certain members come up to him and ask about sales.

Suna remembers _Thursday_. Remembers how the team bought that picture like starving men.

“Is that how you feel?”

“No,” Kita answers, blunt. Suna snorts at the answer and at himself, for thinking he would get something as whimsical as _feeling famous_ from Kita Shinsuke. “But it makes me feel tangible.”

There’s a weight to his pronouncement. Suna imagines it would feel the same in his hand as a volleyball or his camera, the sort of familiar weight you forget to notice.

“Tangible, huh?” Suna doesn’t think he gets it. He doesn’t think he has to.

“Do you have any of you?” Kita asks, hand still on Suna’s camera, fingers just barely brushing Suna’s own. 

Suna has never much cared about the difference in their heights, but it seems of the utmost importance now, with Kita’s face tilted up towards him. “Of course not. Who’s gonna take it?”

Kita nods, like he expected this. “I’ll take one.”

“...what?”

“I’ll take one,” Kita repeats, and pulls the camera out of Suna’s slack hands.

Suna’s hands are frozen as if the camera is still in his grip. “Why?”

Kita has to step back to take the photo. He holds the camera up to his eye, tilts it one way then another while Suna slowly gets over his shock. “You took pictures of the team, but there are none of you.”

“No one asked for a photo of me,” Suna answers. The lighting is bad out here, the sunlight all but gone and the fluorescents from the gym a dim square at their feet. Suna steps forward to take the camera back.

Kita sidesteps him neatly. “You don’t know that.”

“I’m the one taking the orders.”

“That’s why you don’t know that.”

Suna scowls and Kita presses the shutter. Suna splutters.

“Give that back to me,” Suna demands.

“I have to check the picture,” Kita says.

“It’s bad,” Suna says, crossing the short distance between them. “I already know it’s bad.”

Kita hums. “It’s bad,” he allows. Then he presses back, flicks through the photos Suna’s kept catalogued in the camera.

Suna chokes on his embarrassment. “You weren’t supposed to keep going!”

“There are so many of me,” Kita notes, as if off a list of casual observations: _the air is warm, the light is gone, you’ve spent an entire year cataloguing pictures of me._

Suna stays quiet. Kita’s response is both relieving and horribly, horribly disappointing. Kita is kind, but blunt. Suna doesn’t think _accidentally stumbling upon saved pictures_ necessarily counts as a confession, but if it does, he’s sure Kita’s rejection will be firm and straightforward.

“Y’know, Aran was the one to mention where the camera was always pointed,” Kita starts. He lifts the camera to his face again. Suna can feel his stare through the lens.

Kita takes a few steps back, continues, “What I couldn’t understand is why you were paying such close attention to me.”

Suna narrows his eyes. The camera clicks. Suna asks, “Did that bother you?” _Does_ this _bother you?_

The camera is still obscuring most of Kita’s face, but there’s a hint of fondness in his voice when he says, “It’s your habit to bother people, Suna. I’ve never minded it before.”

It’s an allowance, for Kita. One that makes Suna almost hopeful. “Even if the one I’m bothering is you?”

The shadows grow longer across the concrete, but it’s still light enough for Suna to catch the faint smile at the corner of Kita’s mouth when he lowers the camera. “You’re interesting, Suna.”

Suna isn’t sure how one goes about asking out Kita Shinsuke, much less dating Kita Shinsuke. But Suna does know one thing, maybe the most important thing: Kita likes things to be done properly.

Suna opens his mouth, but everything he can think to say is a snapshot of a moment: the intensity of Kita’s gaze from the sideline of a match; a bucket with cleaning supplies in the corner of the clubroom; the shiver of fear at Kita's unyielding logic; the incomprehensibility of keeping his jersey off his shoulders so as to avoid static shocks.

Suna, finding no way to encompass any of that, instead drops his gaze to a spot just under Kita’s chin and says, “I don’t know what it is, but I really like you.”

Kita doesn’t visibly react to this pronouncement, and he doesn’t say anything, either. Just stares at Suna with those unflinching eyes and that slight tilt to his head. Even still, Suna thinks Kita might be nervous. It’s not a word Suna would ever associate with Kita, but he doesn’t have a better word for the way Kita’s finger twist the camera in his hands. The comfort of habitual movements.

“I don’t know,” Kita starts, haltingly, “what it is I like about you, so I think that’s okay.”

And Suna laughs, an unravelling in the sound. He laughs until tears prick at his eyes because it’s endearing, because there is something in the straightforward way Kita admits this that reminds Suna all over again why he can’t take his eyes off this boy.

“Ah,” Kita says, thoughtful, as Suna wipes at the corner of his eyes. Kita lets out a huff of laughter. “It’s stuff like this--the honest way you look right now.”

It startles the laughter out of Suna, startles everything but the glowing warmth in his face out of his mind.

“Hey,” Suna says after a few quiet moments, “Would you mind if I walked you home?

Kita’s eyes glint. “No, I don’t think I would.”

How does one date Kita Shinsuke? Suna has no idea, but when they’re walking back that day, fingers brushing with every step, he thinks he’s very willing to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been _dying_ to write this ship for ages, so I hope yall have enjoyed it! Comments and kudos are always appreciated :V


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